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Lab

Server
and Image
Management
Contents Related Courses

Log in to Horizon 1
OpenStack
Non-Privileged User 1 Essentials

Privileged User 1

Image Management with Nova 2 Related Videos

Neutron Topology 3

Cinder 4 Horizon

Upload an Object with Swift 4

Neutron
Review 5

Nova

Glance

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Labs may take up to five minutes to build always send in a
support ticket on
Access to the Horizon Dashboard is provided our website to talk
to an instructor!
on the Hands-on Lab page, along with your login
credentials
SSH information is provided on the Hands-on Lab
page
Server and Image Management Linux Academy

In this lab, we use the OpenStack essentials we just learned to explore the Horizon dashboard, create a new
instance, review our network topology, attach a volume to our instance, and learn how to create and upload
to an object store container.

Log in to Horizon
Non-Privileged User
Use the URL provided on the Hands-on Lab page to access the login page for the Horizon dashboard. Use
the username demo and the password openstack to log in.

This takes us to the Overview page that provides a general look into our instances, VCPUs, RAM,
floating IPs, security groups, volumes, and volume storage.

On the left menu, under Project, we have our Compute resources, including links to the instance, volume,
image, and access and security dashboards. Should we click on Access & Security, we can see that we have
one security group available, the default group. We can also view our key pairs, floating IPs, and manage
our API access from this area.

From here, we want to go to the API Access tab. This is where we download the OpenStack RC file, which
we use to authenticate access before using the CLI to manage our cloud.

Should we click Network on the left menu, we are presented with links to our network topology (a visual
mapping of the network), our networks, and router information.

Orchestration contains our available stacks and, under Resource Types, provides us with a list of
available topics.

The Object Store section shows us our list of containers and allows us to otherwise create and maintain our
containers and container objects.

Finally, Identity, for non-privileged users, shows us available projects, the username for the project, a
description, and project ID.

Privileged User
Log out of the Horizon dashboard, then log back in, this time as the admin user with the openstack password.

Notice that when we logged in previously it took us to an overview of the project. Now, as the admin user,
our default view is of the system. This gives us an overview of the entire system, across all deployments.
Note that because this lab environment is fairly bare-bones, this page is mostly empty.

Under Systems in the left menu, we can also get further information about our resource usage, hypervisors,
host aggregates, instances, volumes, flavors, images, networks, routers, default settings, metadata definitions,

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and system information.

While Resource Usage is currently fairly empty due to the lab environment, we can see that Hypervisors
gives us information about the type of hypervisor, VCPUs, RAM, storage, and the amount of instances
used; also, under the Compute Host tab, we can get an overview of any hosts in our environment and even
disable service for a host (although do note that this is not recommended in this lab).

Instances shows us available instance information, currently none; and Volumes would show us our
available Cinder volumes, as well as our volume types and any snapshots taken.

Flavors provides a list of all available flavors for our tenants, which define the compute, memory, and
storage capacity of a virtual machine.

Images contains information about the operating system images available for use.

Networks provides us with an overview of our various networks and their status, while Routers shows a
list of routers and their associated project.

The Defaults page states the rate limits for users.

Finally, System Information gives us an overall look at our services, along with an overview of our
Compute and block storage services, network agents, and orchestration services.

Now, click on Identity in the left menu. As you can see, there are more options provided for the admin user
than there were for the demo user earlier. This includes a list of all projects within our OpenStack cloud;
should we select a project such as the demo project and click Manage Members on the upper-right,
we can adjust our project members and quotas. Go ahead and, under the Quota tab, change the Volumes
amount to 20, and Save.

Users shows us all users, both service users and otherwise. Should we select a user, we can see the user ID,
the associated email address, and whether the user is enabled.

Image Management with Nova

Log out of the Horizon dashboard, then log back in at the demo user. Were going to explore Nova,
OpenStacks image management tool.

Once logged in to the Horizon dashboard, click on Instances, under Compute. We want to create a new
instance; to do this, click on Launch Instance.

From the Launch Instance prompt, set the Instance Name to linuxacademy1, the Flavor to m1.tiny, the
Instance Count to 1, and the Instance Boot Source to Boot from image; then, select the cirros image for
Image Name. Note that we left the Availability Zone to nova because that is the only zone we have in this
environment.

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Select the Access & Security tab, and set the Security Group to default. We currently have no key pairs,
so leave that setting as-is.

Click the Networking tab, making note of the asterisk (*) next to the name this means there are required
settings here. Generally, we would choose our network here but since only one is available, OpenStack
auto-populates this.

We can also adjust our Post-Creation scripts and disk partitions (under Advanced Options) but are not
doing so in this lab.

Press Launch to create our instance.

Wait for the new instances Status to change to Active before continuing.

We now want to take some time to review our instances details. Click on the instance name linuxacademy1
if you are following this lab guide exactly. We are taken to an overview of our instance settings, including
ID information, status, creation date and time, and all the information we defined at creation. We can also
see the instances IP address, attached volumes, and any metadata information.

Furthermore, under the Log tab, a text printout of the console is available. At the end of this output, we
should see our username to log in to the instance, as well as password. In this case, the username is cirros
and the password is cubswin:).

Skipping over the Console tab for now, select the Action Log. This shows us a list of actions made against
the server, along with the ID of the request, and the ID of the user that made it. Only one action should be
listed, the create action.

Now, select the Console tab. Here we are prompted with a web-based console, or terminal, that we can use
to access our server just like we would using a traditional terminal application (such as PuTTY on Windows
or Terminal on Mac and various Linux flavors). Use the credentials provided on the Log tab to SSH into
the server.

We can now run commands as we would on a regular terminal. Try printing out the working directory:

pwd

Neutron Topology
Neutron is OpenStacks networking service. This includes a visual network topology.

While still logged in as the demo user, select Network Topology, under Network. This shows us a network
denoted by four icons, one of which represents the linuxacademy1 instance we created in the previous
section attached to a private network, which is, in turn, connected to the router1 router. This router can
then community with the outside public.

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Should you click on each icon, or bubble, you can see more information about that piece of the network.
When we click on the linuxacademy1 bubble, we can see the ID, status, and IP address information for that
instance, as well as links to more detailed information pages about that instance, a link to the web console,
and the option to delete the instance entirely.

Now select the private network bubble. This provides us with the ID and status of the network, as well as
any subnets the network has just one, in this instance. We can also view further details and remove the
network.

Click the route1 bubble; as with the others, this shows up the UUID, status, attached interface, and a link
for more details. We can also add or remove interfaces or remove the router entirely.

Cinder
Were now going to explore Cinder, OpenStacks block storage solution.

Still as the demo user, go to Volumes, under Compute. Press Create Volume on the upper-right.

We are now prompted to define our volume settings. We set the Volume Name to linuxacademy1-vol, left
the Description empty and the Volume Source as No source, empty volume, changed the Type to iscsi, set
the Size (GB) to 1, and left the Availability Zone as nova. Note that on the right, we can see the volume
limits we can use no more than 10000 GB in space and up to 20 volumes. Press Create Volume.

We now want to attach our volume to the instance we created in earlier sections. On the right of the row for
our volume, under Actions, we have a button that reads Edit Volumes and contains an arrow button to the
right side. Click the arrow button to select Manage Attachments. Under Attach to Instance, select the
linuxacademy1 server. Attach Volume.

Wait for the Attached to column to update, then click on the linuxacademy1 link. We can use this to
confirm that the volume is properly attached. This takes us to the console. Use the fdisk command to
confirm:

sudo fdisk -l

This shows us all our mounted disks. /dev/xvda1 is our root disk for the instance, while /dev/xvdb is
our unformatted volume that we just added.

Upload an Object with Swift

Finally, we want to use OpenStacks object store, Swift, to upload objects.

Remain as the demo user. Under Object Store, click on Containers. Press Create Container.

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Set the Container Name to linuxacademy, and leave the Container Access to private. Press Create
Container.

Once created, we now have more options. We can create a pseudo-folder within our container, which allows
for filepaths that mimic those in traditional directory structures, or we can simply upload an object. We want
to Upload Object.

Press Choose File to upload an object from your workstation computer this can be anything you want.
This automatically populates the object name. This can be changed, if you so desire. Click Upload Object.

Now, because our container is private, this object is not publicly available. We can change this by clicking
the arrow to the left of the View Details button for our container, and clicking Make Public. This generates
a public URL for both the container and the objects in our container. We can also make the container private
again by clicking Make Private under the right arrow.

Review
Armed with the basic knowledge of common OpenStack services, we can now create and managed instances
in Nova, review our networking with Neutron, create volumes with Cinder, and manage an object store with
Swift. You can use the time left in the lab to further explore the OpenStack dashboard, or end the lab.

This lab is now complete.

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